Land Conservation and Energy Infrastructure: Threats and
OpportunitiesYale University EliScholar – A Digital Platform for
Scholarly Publishing at Yale Forestry & Environmental Studies
Publications Series School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies
2010
Casey Pickett
Livia DeMarchis
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Recommended Citation Gentry, Bradford; Pickett, Casey; and
DeMarchis, Livia, "Land Conservation and Energy Infrastructure:
Threats and Opportunities" (2010). Forestry & Environmental
Studies Publications Series. 43.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/fes-pubs/43
yale school of forestry & environmental studies 2010
Table of Contents Section I: Introduction 1
Box 1 Workshop Participants 2
Section II: Linking energy policy and land conservation in the U.S.
5 Summary of Major Themes and Next Steps 5
Section III: Key themes of the Obama Administration’s energy policy
15 as it relates to land use in the U.S.
Background 15 Questions for Consideration 25 Organizations and
Individuals Doing Interesting Work 25 Useful Readings/Works Cited
26 Key Takeaways from the Discussion with Dan Reicher, Google
29
Section IV: Siting renewable energy facilities 31 Background 31
Questions for Consideration 44 Organizations and Individuals Doing
Interesting Work 45 Useful Readings/Works Cited 46 Environmental
Considerations for Wind Energy Facilities and Land 50
Conservation, Paul G. Risser, University of Oklahoma Key Takeaways
from the Discussion 54
Section V: Siting electrical transmission and distribution lines 59
Background 59 Questions for Consideration 65 Organizations and
Individuals Doing Interesting Work 66 Useful Readings/Works Cited
66 Congressional Testimony of Chris Miller, Piedmont Environment
Council 68 Key Takeaways from the Discussion 76
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Section VI: Expanding natural gas and oil exploration/production 79
Background 79 Questions for Consideration 93 Organizations and
Individuals Doing Interesting Work 93 Useful Readings/Works Cited
94 Key Takeaways from the Discussion 96
Section VII: The future of coal/carbon dioxide capture and storage
99 Background 99 Questions for Consideration 114 Organizations and
Individuals Doing Interesting Work 114 Useful Readings/Works Cited
115 Key Takeaways from the Discussion 118
Section VIII: Whither biofuels? 123 Background 123 Questions for
Consideration 135 Organizations and Individuals Doing Interesting
Work 135 Useful Readings/Works Cited 136 Forest Biomass Reading
List, prepared by Anton Chiono, Pacific Forest Trust 138 Key
Takeaways from the Discussion 139
Biosketches of authors 143
biosketches of authors 143
Biosketches of Authors
Bradford S. Gentry is the Director of the Center for Business and
the Environment, as well as a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar
at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Trained
as a biologist and a lawyer, his work focuses on strengthening the
links between private investment and improved environmental
performance. He is also an advisor to GE, Baker & McKenzie,
Suez Environnement and the UN Climate Secretariat, as well as a
member of Working Lands Investment Partners and Board Chair for the
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Mr. Gentry received his B.A.
from Swarthmore College (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1977 and his J.D. from
Harvard Law School (Magna Cum Laude) in 1981.
Casey Pickett is a secondyear joint master's degree student at the
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Yale
School of Management, focused on strategies for sustainable small
town economic development. After studying ecological design at
Oberlin College, he founded an organization focusing on progressive
land use policy, downtown revitalization and energy efficiency in
small towns. In 20032004 he worked as a field organizer and
regional director for the presidential campaign of Howard Dean.
From 20052008 he worked in the Sustainable Construction Group at
Turner Construction Company, whose mission is to raise the level of
green building expertise and improve the environmental performance
of the company. He designed and implemented a national construction
waste management program for Turner. At Yale, he has been looking
into the challenges of rural economic development in a future with
carbon constraints. He is interested in the roles that housing
density and micro venture capital can play in creating socially
fulfilling, economically just lowcarbon lifestyles in small towns.
In the summer of 2009 he interned for a green mixedincome housing
developer that works in small towns in northern New England.
Livia DeMarchis is a thirdyear law student at the Yale Law School,
where she has most recently been focusing on business transactions
and tax law. She received her MEM from the Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies in 2005 and her B.A. from Yale College in
2004. While at Yale F&ES, she studied conservation ecology and
green architecture. Between getting her masters and beginning law
school, she was a paralegal in Burlington, Vermont. Next year, she
will be clerking for Justice John Dooley on the Vermont Supreme
Court and then plans to work as an associate in the tax department
at Ropes & Gray in Boston.
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1
Introduction
U.S. energy infrastructure is unquestionably expanding. This may be
in response to recent years’ steep rises in energy prices and
concerns about energy security or the 2009 focus on using
infrastructure projects to help stimulate the economy and address
climate change. At a minimum there is tension, if not direct
conflict, between the expansion of
energy infrastructure (even “green” energy such as wind) and
efforts to conserve open space. New turbines and transmission lines
consume land – often land of high amenity and ecosystem value.
Similar issues arise around the production of biofuels – do they
offer sustainable uses for rural areas or are they just another
form of intensive, destructive agricultural production? Do the
efforts to increase domestic gas and oil production offer only
threats or are there ways to couple these activities with new
mitigation/conservation efforts? Is there such a thing as “clean
coal” and what might be its footprint – through mining,
transportation, combustion, carbon dioxide capture, transportation,
and underground injection? For many U.S. land trusts, issues
regarding energy infrastructure provide one of
their first, most direct links to the impacts of global warming and
possible responses. Should we support the expansion of wind energy?
If so, where? Should we amend existing easements to allow the
construction of new turbines? Should we support the expanded use of
woody biomass or will doing so degrade the health of our soils and
forests? Are mitigation credits – from wetlands, streamsides,
forests and other ecosystems – a valuable source of conservation
finance to be pursued or an illusion that distracts our attention
from the real impacts of expanded energy production and
transmission? Only by stepping back from the daytoday effort to
protect land and engaging
with others from outside the land conservation community can U.S.
conservation leaders hope to develop strategic responses to these
questions. The Obama administration’s efforts to link energy and
environmental policies also offer an opportunity to address these
issues in new and more effective ways. The purpose of the 2009
Berkley workshop was to explore these opportunities and
threats, as well as to develop creative ways forward. The workshop
convened a diverse
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2 :
range of leaders in land conservation and energy policy (see Box
1). The facilitated discussions and free time for
thought/conversation on the grounds of the Pocantico Conference
Center were designed to stimulate innovative thinking on new
approaches to these issues. As part of a multiyear effort
involving Yale, the Land Trust Alliance, and other conservation
leaders, several mechanisms for followup from the ideas and
actions identified during the workshop are already in place.
Box 1 Workshop participants
Judy Anderson, President, Community Consultants Forrest Berkley,
Board Member, Maine Coast Heritage Trust Aimee Christensen, Board
Member, American Council on Renewable Energy Ernest Cook, Director
of Conservation, Trust for Public Land Kaarsten Turner Dalby,
Senior Director Ecological Services, The Forestland Group LLC Jim
Dooley, Senior Staff Scientist, Joint Global Change Research
Institute Kim Elliman, CEO, Open Space Institute Jay Espy,
Executive Director, Sewall Foundation Brad Gentry, Senior Lecturer
and Director, Yale Program on Strategies for the Future
of Conservation, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental
Studies Nathanael Greene, Director, Renewable Energy Policy, NRDC
Frank Hebbert, Associate Planner GIS, Regional Plan Association
Janet Keating, Executive Director, Ohio Valley Environmental
Coalition Gil Livingston, President, Vermont Land Trust Andy Loza,
Executive Director, Pennsylvania Land Trust Association Nancy
McLaughlin, Professor of Law, University of Utah Chris Miller,
President, Piedmont Environmental Council Casey Pickett, Masters
Student, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies David
Higby, Director Federal Government Relations, The Nature
Conservancy of NY Christopher Recchia, Executive Director, Biomass
Energy Resource Center Dan Reicher, Director, Climate and Energy
Initiatives, Google.org Paul Risser, Chair, National Research
Council Committee on the Environmental
Impacts of Wind Energy Projects, CEO, University of Oklahoma
Research Cabinet
Marc Smiley, Partner, Decisions Decisions Peter Stein, General
Partner, The Lyme Timber Company Randy Swisher, Former Executive
Director, American Wind Energy Association Buzz Thompson, Professor
of Law and CoDirector Woods Institute for the
Environment, Stanford University Laurie Wayburn, President, Pacific
Forest Trust Rand Wentworth, President, Land Trust Alliance
This is the fourth in a series of workshops providing convening and
research support for efforts to expand and apply most effectively
the resources (financial, political, personnel) available for land
conservation in the US. It is made possible by gifts from Forrest
Berkley and Marcie Tyre to the Yale School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies, as well as additional support from the
Overhills and Pequot Capital Foundations. The structure and
background papers for the workshop also
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build from the clean energy and land use dialogue during the REIL
Network meeting in 2008 sponsored by the Blue Moon Fund and the UN
Foundation. Marc Smiley, our facilitator, once again did a
wonderful job making sure that the conversation was lively and
productive, while offering everyone an opportunity to share their
thoughts. Many thanks as well to Amy Badner for all of her help
organizing the administrative aspects of the gathering. Our deepest
appreciation also goes to Judy Clark, Regina Creegan and their
colleagues at the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation for allowing us
to use the magnificent facilities at the Pocantico Conference
Center. Finally, it is important to note that the views expressed
in this publication are solely those of the editors and individual
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Yale
University, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund or any of the other
participants. Lastly, our gratitude is extended to the F&ES
Publication Series for making this publication possible.
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5 linking energy policy ;nd l;nd conserv;tion in the u.s.
Section II
summary of major themes
Over the course of the three days, a massive amount of learning
occurred and a remarkable set of connections were made. The purpose
of this section is to summarize some of the major themes of the
discussion, along with the next steps participants identified as
ones that they will or others should pursue.
Themes from the discussion
The conservation and clean energy communities need each other
Probably the most important theme to emerge was how much the land
conservation and clean energy communities in the U.S. need each
other. Land trusts need help ensuring that the effort to build new
energy infrastructure does not target already conserved land. This
requires that they have a seat at the clean energy/climate change
table, as that is where the policy momentum currently resides.
Helping to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses will also allow
land trusts to benefit from mitigation funding opportunities as
they arise and, hopefully, reduce the scale of the adaptation
efforts that will be required in the future. At the same time, the
clean energy community needs help siting “good” projects
quickly. This requires not only connections at the federal level,
but also effective grassroots/tops, bipartisan, communitybased
networks – one of the key strengths of the land trust movement.
Local conservation networks need to see the value of specific
projects to help speed their siting and deployment. In addition,
the conservation community can help implement costeffective
mitigation techniques, from storing carbon in
forests/grasslands/geologic formations to substituting current
carbon (in the form of woody biomass) for fossil carbon. These
mutual needs also underscore how much the clean energy and
conservation
communities have to learn from each other – especially as they
increasingly come together as part of the broader climate change
community. This could be seen in the
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opportunities
different tone of the discussions this year as compared to previous
years. This year there were fewer arguments that any particular
position should be adopted and many more questions about new areas
as the participants tried to get their arms around the
technologies, policies, business realities and ethics of the topics
being considered. This was particularly true of climate change –
and all of the attendees owe Jim Dooley a debt of gratitude for his
agreement to offer a superb update on climate science and potential
responses on extremely short notice.
Land trusts need to pursue a more dynamic model of “permanent
conservation”
The focus on climate change also poignantly poses the question of
what “permanent” land conservation means in practice. A view that
the land trust community should be trying to stop all change
clearly cannot hold. The only constant is change, whether through
natural processes, shifts in human values, humaninduced changes to
the climate or technological changes that pose new threats to open
spaces; such technological changes themselves span from lowspeed
wind turbines in areas with less wind to new techniques for
extracting natural gas from oil shale deposits. Some of the
implications of this line of inquiry include the need for the land
trust community to:
Continue to think about how legal instruments can be drafted/used
to anticipate and adapt to such changes, such as through the
inclusion of specific provisions (floating conservation zones,
amendment procedures) and the articulation of criteria (balancing
scientific and community values) on which such changes may be
made;
Find ways to incorporate the most recent data on projected changes
in temperature, moisture and other climate factors into
conservation planning efforts;
Consider how aesthetics fit into such questions in a changing
world, particularly since a powerful part of the land trust
business model has been helping donors prevent changes to the lands
they love; and
Challenge itself to lead on the change it would like to see, rather
than waiting for condemnation proceedings to sort out the debate
sitebysite.
While some participants were of the view that the urgent need to
respond to climate change should trump virtually all other public
goals, others did not share that perspective. At a minimum, this
means that the efforts to find win/win opportunities must
intensify. Ways must be found to add “saving land” to the list of
popular co benefits from actions to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions – such as saving money (through energy efficiency),
creating jobs (through the manufacture and deployment of new,
cleaner technologies) and increasing energy security (through
reductions in energy demand, as well as the use of more domestic
energy sources). The opportunities to reduce emissions from land
development and store more carbon in natural areas make this an
opportunity well worth exploring further. For example,
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7 linking energy policy ;nd l;nd conserv;tion in the u.s.
saving land can save money (as carbon storage in forests/grasslands
costs less than many other options), create jobs (in community
forestry using woody biomass as a fuel), and increase energy
security (through the use of locally grown plants as fuel) while
also helping to reduce the flooding expected from extreme storms.
It can also allow for the storage of water in areas hit by drought
and create opportunities to purify water at a lower cost than more
carbonintensive concrete and steel treatment plants.
The comparative advantage of land trusts is their ability to say
yes across divides Land trusts clearly have the potential to help
move the aforementioned efforts forward. Their focus on permanent
land conservation in the communities within which they work, along
with their local, bipartisan appeal, makes them uniquely credible
messengers between relevant stakeholders. This is true both in
local communities as well as with representatives in state capitals
and Washington, DC. Land trusts can also help the broader
environmental community combine fear
with hope – linking the ability to say no (to certain proposals)
with the ability to say yes. Many environmental organizations are
more comfortable just saying no – you cannot build/dump that here.
One of the core strengths of the land trust movement, however, is
saying yes – doing deals to acquire rights to land, often in
unusual and difficult circumstances. Marrying the ability to try to
stop “bad” clean energy projects with the ability to
help move “good” projects along more quickly will be a key
component of any effort to bring together the U.S. clean energy and
land conservation communities. Obviously, this means that land
trusts will need to know what they want to see in “good” projects
and be able to say no to “bad” ones – both internally and
externally. Nathanael Greene offered three principles on which to
build these efforts: (1) minimize the tradeoffs that have to be
made; (2) make any tradeoffs carefully; and (3) make sure to
receive what was bargained for when the tradeoff was made.
New skill sets will be required for land trusts Doing so will
require new skill sets for the land trust community at the local,
regional, and national levels. While some land trusts have strong
public education programs, others do not – such programs will need
to be scaled up dramatically. Political action by land trusts often
involves targeted contact with decision makers who are supporters
of land conservation efforts – will there be a need to go beyond
those known supporters to help cultivate new ones? Finding the time
and resources to collect, analyze, and disseminate data on the
benefits of combining more efficient or cleaner energy efforts with
the protection of critical lands will also be a challenge. Since so
many energy infrastructure issues arise at a regional level, it may
make sense to expand the role of land trust service bureaus to
providing support for work on these topics as well.
And traditional connections will have to be applied in new ways A
large number of conservationists have joined the Obama
administration, offering an unusual opportunity to push for a
balance between protecting critical landscapes
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opportunities
For an overview of technolo gies to address climate
change, see the GTSP’s 2007
report on Global Energy
Technology Strategy at http://www.pnl.gov/gtsp/
docs/gtsp_2007_final.pdf/.
and deploying cleaner energy technologies. The Land Trust Alliance
should consider keeping an inventory directory of conservationists
in the administration, as well as assessing how connections with
land trusts can help bring value to their work. One specific
initiative is to push for or provide data on interagency efforts
to create guidelines for assessing and siting new energy facilities
that take account of conservation values and community input. Prior
work on tax incentives for conservation has demonstrated the value
of the
land trust community’s grasstops networks in Congress. That network
should be brought to bear on clean energy and climate change as
well. Efforts should be made to identify senators whose votes are
key on climate change or clean energy legislation, then to see
which ones are also close to the conservation community and
ultimately strive to meet with them. Among the topics that could be
covered are: (a) ensuring that public and private protected areas
are considered in any federal preemption of the process for siting
transmission lines; and (b) providing other incentives for land
conservation as part of a climate or clean energy bill.
Responding to climate change requires the urgent use of many
different technologies Moving from these broad themes to more
detailed reflections on the discussions regarding specific
technologies, one major conclusion was clear – the scale of the
change needed to respond to climate change means that no one
technology or approach will be enough. Rather, a suite of efforts
across a range of technologies and locations will be required. This
appears to include an expanded and more connected electricity
network as we move from primary reliance on constant/baseload power
(coal, nuclear) to more intermittent sources (wind, solar) and
decentralized energy production/storage. A related conclusion is
that as we move from more dense fuels (fossil fuel, nuclear) to
less dense fuels (wind, solar, biomass), more land will be
required. This means that the competition for land for food, fiber,
fuel, shelter and services will only intensify. Another specific
reflection detailed how wide the range of issues discussed
spanned different covered technologies. For wind farms and
transmission lines, the focus was on criteria and processes for
finding and permitting the “best” sites. For oil and gas
exploration it was on the implications of technological change in
terms of threats to open space, as well as the reputational issues
around engagement with energy projects. Issues of severed estates –
either subsurface rights or fee ownership – arose in the
discussions about fossil fuels and carbon dioxide capture and
storage. The human impacts of energy development were starkly
illustrated by the discussion of mountaintop removal coal mining in
Appalachia. Additionally, the need for new models of locally
sourced and delivered heat energy was a central part of the woody
biomass discussion. The next few paragraphs dig a little more
deeply into some of these issues. At the
same time, the variety of topics covered underscores the need for
the land conservation and clean energy communities to continue to
learn from each other. Only by doing so can they hope to navigate
the tension between conserving critical lands and rapidly deploying
cleaner energy technologies.1
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9 linking energy policy ;nd l;nd conserv;tion in the u.s.
Energy efficiency is priority number one
All land trusts should push energy efficiency first and as
fervently as they can. If demand for energy is reduced, so, too, is
the need for new generation and transmission facilities. Land
trusts should collaborate with energy efficiency advocates and
local programs to promote specific actions in their own operations,
by their members, and in their broader communities. Tighter links
should also be forged with the smart growth community, given their
focus on energy efficiency in buildings and transportation
systems.
New information technologies need to be used to inform siting
processes in novel ways Much of our discussion focused on capturing
the opportunities that exist to influence the new energy facility
siting process. New information technologies offer a means for
mapping areas of special interest and engaging a wide range of
stakeholders to help define both areas for development and those
for protection. Specific efforts in this area might include the
following:
Articulating guidelines for assessing potential energy development
sites and building from those that have been developed to
date;
Pushing for a broader, more integrated approach to energy resource
planning, particularly in the identification and assessment of
options for ways forward;
Including data on conserved lands, energy resource potential,
patterns of existing development and a range of other community
values in the assessment of potential sites for energy
projects;
Expanding efforts to hear from more parties earlier in the siting
process as part of energy planning efforts at the national, state,
regional, and local levels;
Seeking to engage land trusts more directly in the
assessment/planning processes already underway, such as the
administration’s look at siting on federal lands or that in which
NRDC is involved in the U.S. West;
Advocating for combined “infrastructure corridors,” including power
lines, major roads, rail systems, pipelines, etc. as a way to
minimize the footprint of the different networks;
Engaging around the topic of cost allocation – not just direct, but
externalized costs as well – as a vehicle for justifying
mitigation/compensation areas and payments as part of new energy
development projects; and
Using whatever leverage the conservation community has to insert
the results of these proactive, regional assessment efforts into
the more formal energy siting processes led by governments,
regional transmission organizations, and electric utilities.
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10 l;nd conserv;tion ;nd energy infr;structure: thre;ts ;nd
opportunities
Subsurface rights are a growing area of concern for the
conservation community
A couple of specific areas of work were identified around
subsurface energy activities, as these appear to be posing new
questions for an increasing number of land trusts. Included were
the needs to:
Offer guidance on options for responding to oil and gas leasing on
or near conserved lands;
Consider how that guidance might apply to subsurface technologies
that seem likely to receive more attention in the future,
particularly carbon dioxide capture and storage (from the burning
of fossil or other biofuels) and deep geothermal projects;
and
Respond to the Secretary of the Interior’s request that the land
trust community take a position on offshore drilling, particularly
given the historical use of royalties to help fund land
conservation.
Engaging communities and related ethical issues will continue as
critical areas for work
Underlying many of our discussions were deeper questions about the
roles of local communities and the ethical dimensions of land use
decisions. On the community side, a variety of concerns were raised
about their capacity and right to be heard on, influence, and
benefit from the siting of energy projects. Much of the discussion
focused on links with local communities, including the historic
concentration of land ownership in corporate hands in much of
Appalachian coal country, methods for obtaining community input on
aesthetics/viewshed issues, and the possibility of recognizing
public ownership rights in wind and solar resources. As land trusts
become more engaged on these issues, their traditional strengths in
enabling decentralized, communityscale action are likely to become
an even more valuable part of their efforts. On the ethics side, a
wide range of issues were raised. One of the clean energy
representatives raised the question of who should decide how to use
what land, expressing some surprise that land trusts, as unelected
private actors, felt comfortable making such decisions on their
own. More generally: Who should decide what tradeoffs are
appropriate using what process with input from whom? Should land
trusts profit from fossil fuels? What leadership roles should land
trusts and their individual members be taking on climate
change/energy options? While a range of views were offered by
individual participants on these and related questions, no effort
was made to forge a consensus. Rather, these issues remain to be
discussed in specific projects, as well as in broader strategy
sessions in the future.
next steps
In addition to these broad themes, participants also identified a
number of next steps for their organizations, the new
administration, and researchers. A sample of these suggestions is
provided below.
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11 linking energy policy ;nd l;nd conserv;tion in the u.s.
Actions by their organizations Land conservation/management
organizations
Be more vocal and engaged on the need to respond to climate change,
even ahead of more traditional reasons to conserve land.
Partner with energy, energy efficiency, climate, and other
environmental groups to help capture current policy
opportunities.
Articulate the value of open space/natural areas as part of the
solution to climate change (mitigation/adaptation).
Add energy production to their definition of “working landscapes,”
including “community/conservation energy” from woody biomass.
Help promote the development of community scale renewable energy
projects (wood, methane, wind, solar, etc.).
Inventory and disseminate information on new
mapping/decisionmaking tools being developed to enable spatially
explicit and participatory planning efforts.
Better understand and help promote incentives for deploying more
renewable energy technologies.
Engage more closely with the smart growth/transportationoriented
development communities to understand how best to collaborate on
specific projects.
Think more deeply about the impact of traditional approaches to
land conservation on standards of living, climate change, and
related issues, as well as the implications for future work.
Help develop siteappropriate rules/guidance for managing conserved
forests and range lands to reflect climate considerations.
Expand the attention paid to energy issues as part of the due
diligence for land acquisitions.
Review model easement language in light of both climate change and
energy project developments.
Think about better ways to communicate the connection between land
protection and responses to climate change.
More actively undertake and promote actions to save energy,
including energy audits of offices/homes, along with expanded
communications with members and the land trust community as a
whole.
Seek to modify state eminent domain laws to ensure that they
reflect conservation organizations’ ownership rights and ecosystem
values.
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opportunities
Support wind projects on their lands.
Build a national database of sites under conservation easements to
add to those covering feeowned conservation land.
Clean energy organizations Link energy and land use efforts more
widely.
Bring local land trusts into efforts to say yes to “good” clean
energy projects.
Bring people from the land conservation community into the
climate/clean energy policy discussions/advocacy at the state and
national levels.
Connect land conservation organizations with the providers of clean
energy technologies to explore ways forward
Research/academic organizations Continue to educate the
environmental community on how climate change
(as a stock problem) poses fundamentally different issues than
traditional pollution (flow problem) and that it needs to be
addressed using all available tools as quickly as possible, while
still working to raise the general standard of living on the planet
(particularly in developing countries).
Encourage land trusts to engage publicly at the micro (local news,
with members) and macro (in DC) levels on the need for action on
climate, including siting issues.
Work with the land trust community to build databases on why
certain areas are important so that the scientific community can
harvest micro level details on land use from them.
Develop maps of historical and projected land use change over
centuries for use with policymakers, landowners and others.
Analyze big data sets on energy infrastructure, other
infrastructure, and natural systems/infrastructure to see where
they overlap or do not and disseminate the results.
Develop new tools to enable faster modeling of land use choices and
broader participation as part of visioning/planning
processes.
Bring land trusts into the work of more academic ecologists on
predicting ecological change.
Understand the land use impacts of the carbon offsets being
purchased by the organizations for which they work.
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13 linking energy policy ;nd l;nd conserv;tion in the u.s.
Ideas for action by the Obama administration
Recognize the climate value from “saving land.”
Ensure that mitigation for new energy projects is adequate to
compensate for the full range of their externalized costs.
Ensure full accounting for carbon from different forms of biomass
energy.
Include consideration of both publicly and privately protected
lands in any federal preemption policy for energy facilities.
Pursue an interagency task force on guidelines and processes for
assessing possible sites for energy projects.
Recognize that different energy technologies raise different issues
and face different problems and thereby require different policy
responses.
Review the wording of the federal tax code, as well as the model
easement under the Forest Legacy and other federal funding
programs, to ensure that they adequately reflect climate and clean
energy related goals on conserved lands.
Truly dedicate the funds from energy projects on federal lands to
conservation programs.
Coordinate the spending of federal stimulus dollars with the
results of recent climate modeling.
Topics for further research and development How might the
ambiguities in old conservation easements be addressed
through presumptions expressed in state law?
How do cases on rights of way reflect/address protected
lands?
Whether renewable energy resources are or should be covered by the
public trust doctrine – i.e., is the government under an obligation
to ensure that they are used to promote the public interest in a
responsible fashion?
How do decentralized energy technologies/systems fit into current,
more centralized systems, models and decisionmaking processes for
responding to climate change?
What are the best ways to bring diverse communities to a common
level of understanding on clean energy projects? How might new
information technologies help support such efforts?
What does a full, lifecycle accounting show as the carbon budget
for different types of biofuels and carbon storage
technologies?
Continue work to understand and articulate the environmental
effects of wind farms.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
14 l;nd conserv;tion ;nd energy infr;structure: thre;ts ;nd
opportunities
What are the implications of various carbon storage techniques for
land management choices?
What would it take to develop a mapping tool that helps landowners
see the carbon impacts of different land management choices? Does
one already exist?
Explore ways to bring the values held by affected individuals into
the data analysis for siting decisions.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
’ .. 15
Section III
Key Themes of the Obama Administration’s Energy Policy as It
Relates to Land Use in the U.S.1 Casey Pickett, Yale
University
background
In his February 24th speech to a joint session of Congress,
President Barack Obama outlined his vision for the economic
recovery of the United States (Obama, 2009). He gave the nation’s
energy infrastructure top billing, before healthcare and education.
The President claimed that the country best able to capture the
promise of renewable energy would lead the world in the 21st
century. In the last year, energy infrastructure has gone from a
somewhat obscure topic to an acknowledged issue of national
importance. A new energy system seems to hold a special place in
the aspirations of the President for its ability to address
simultaneously three key challenges: the nation’s employment and
economic woes; climate change; and independence from foreign oil.
Many on the President’s staff have been quoted offering variations
on the idea that
“a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” It is clear that the Obama
Administration intends to push forward a major renewable energy
agenda despite (or because of) the international economic crisis.
Congress also is pursuing action on energy and climate change. Rep.
Henry
Waxman (DCA), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,
and Rep. Edward Markey (DMA) have introduced a draft capandtrade
proposal that passed Waxman’s committee on May 21, titled H.R.
2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (House Committee
on Energy and Commerce, summary 5/21/09). Though there is “no
comparably comprehensive” bill in the Senate (Galbraith, 5/22/09),
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to bring a combined
energy and climate bill to the Senate floor in August 2009
(Deutsche Bank, 2009). The future of U.S. energy infrastructure
policy will likely depend on the combination of Congressional and
Presidential proposals.
1 The state of national energy and climate policy in the spring of
2009 is changing
rapidly. Different sections of this paper have been outdated
throughout the writing
process and many portions are likely to be out of date by the time
the paper is read.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
What is the difference between closedloop and openloop
biomass?
Closed loop biomass refers to vegetative material planted
specifically for use as a source of electricity. Open loop biomass
includes most other types of plant based energy sources, including
livestock wastes and solid cellulosic materials derived from
forests, land clearing debris and trimmings, con struction and
industrial wood wastes, and agricultural products. It does not
include municipal solid waste or paper (Oregon.gov).
16 :
Within the executive branch, there is also a plan to promote land
conservation goals. The new administration is bringing leaders from
the conservation community into the Department of Interior and
other agencies. These leaders are faced with the challenge of
managing threats and opportunities for land conservation within the
push for new energy infrastructure.
broad goals of the obama administration’s energy policy
The broad goals of the Administration’s energy policy (Obama, 2009;
Whitehouse.gov, 2009) are the following:
1. Double the U.S. supply of renewable energy by 2012.
2. Install thousands of miles of transmission lines and modernize
the electric grid.
3. Implement a marketbased capandtrade system for carbon
emissions.
4. Create jobs and lower bills nationwide through improved energy
efficiency.
5. Increase fossil fuel production in the U.S.
6. Invest in lowcarbon energy technologies, including carbon
capture and storage.
These goals and their attendant programs, along with some relevant
components of Congressional legislation, are discussed below.
Goal 1: Double the supply of renewable energy by 2012
U.S. DOE Loan Guarantee Program
The President has several initiatives to double the supply of
renewable energy by 2012. The first uses a program established by
the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) to guarantee loans for
advanced energy technology production. The first round of
applications for this guarantee were accepted in 2006 for projects
focused on transmission and electricity reliability, energy
efficiency and pollution control, alternative fuel vehicles, carbon
capture and storage, and renewable technologies— wind, hydropower,
solar, hydrogen, and biomass (US DOE Loan Guarantee Program). The
DOE guaranteed its first loan on March 20, 2009, in the amount of
$535 million, to Solyndra, Inc. for production expansion of a
proprietary photovoltaic system (Broder, 2009). The program uses $6
billion to guarantee approximately $60 billion in loans (Deutsche
Bank, 2009).
Extending production and investment tax credits
The production tax credit (PTC) was initially created through the
Energy Policy Act of 1992 to reward companies producing energy from
renewable sources. It initially applied only to wind and some
bioenergy sources, but has been extended several times since then,
most recently through the October 2008 Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act (EESA) (Union of Concerned Scientists). The
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), passed early in
2009,
extended the existing production tax credit for companies producing
energy from wind and refined coal through 2012, and for geothermal,
smallscale hydroelectric, landfill gas, trash combustion, and
bioenergy through 2013 (Deutsche Bank, 2009). Under the PTC, wind,
geothermal, and dedicatedcrop or closedloop bioenergy generators
receive 1.9 cents/kWh for the first ten years of energy production.
Companies producing energy through openloop bioenergy, small
hydroelectric, landfill gas and trash combustion receive a smaller
benefit (Union of Concerned Scientists). The EESA also extended
another tax credit, the Investment Tax Credit (ITC),
originally established in 2005 for commercial and residential solar
energy systems. EESA changed the residential cost cap to provide
greater benefits for larger systems (Union of Concerned
Scientists). ARRA improves upon the EESA by allowing ITC credits to
be swapped for PTC credits, and by providing grants through the
Treasury Department for up to 30% of project costs in lieu of
investment tax credits (ACORE, 2009). Both of these measures allow
companies to receive financial assistance up front, which is of
critical importance during the financial crisis.
Renewable Energy Bonds
EPAct 2005 created the Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) program
to incent investorowned utilities and private developers to
provide renewable energy (NRECA, 2006). ARRA added to the program,
dividing $1.6 billion equally among three types of players: public
power providers; electric cooperatives; and state/local/tribal
governments. ARRA directs the bonds toward the familiar set
of
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18 :
renewable energy sources: wind; closedloop biomass; openloop
biomass; geothermal; small irrigation; hydropower; landfill gas;
marine renewable; and trash combustion facilities (ACORE,
2009).
Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits
To stimulate business investment in clean energy technology, the
ARRA provides $2 billion in tax credits for manufacturing capacity.
These credits cover 30% of business investment that will lead to
increased production of components for renewable energy, carbon
capture and storage, hybrid/electric car energy storage systems,
and grid systems that enable increased renewable energy supply
(ACORE, 2009).
Helping farmers participate in the clean energy economy
The 2010 budget allocates $20 billion for the Department of
Agriculture to invest in rural small businesses, telecommunications
infrastructure, and renewable energy systems. It specifies that
USDA will help farmers realize benefits from carbon credits and
includes an increase of $250 million in loans and grants for
biofuels and wind power installation (OMB, 2009).
Goal 2: Increasing and modernizing electricity transmission
infrastructure
The Administration intends major expansion of and improvements to
the national electric grid. The chief tools it will employ are:
building new highvoltage transmission lines; creating a National
Infrastructure Bank; investing in the smart grid; and creating a
massive infrastructure workforce training program.
Building new highvoltage transmission lines for renewable
energy
The Obama administration’s 2010 budget proclaims that, “in order to
bring significant amounts of renewable energy online, tens of
thousands of miles of new, highvoltage national transmission is
necessary” (OMB 2009). The Department of Energy budget adds to the
$11 billion for transmission improvements and expansion included in
the Recovery Act (OMB 2009). In addition, Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid is pushing a proposal to speed the approval of new power
lines by creating broader Federal siting powers in newly designated
Renewable Energy Zones (Bloomberg.com). The future of this proposal
is unclear at the time of this writing. Increasing renewable energy
transmission will take considerable sums of money.
In early February 2009, a major grid planning effort was released.
Titled “the Joint Coordinated System Plan,” it claimed that $80
billion will be needed in new transmission infrastructure to allow
the Eastern Interconnection, which supplies power to most of the
eastern U.S. and parts of Canada, to obtain 20% of its energy from
wind by 2024 (Energy Current, 2009, and Bloomberg, 2009).
National Infrastructure Bank
The primary funding mechanism that President Obama has proposed for
transmission line construction and expansion is a new National
Infrastructure Bank.
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His budget asks for $5 billion per year for the bank from 2010
through 2014, and includes it in the list of “major agencies” along
with the EPA, Social Security Administration, GSA, and NASA. In
addition to investing federal monies, the bank will coordinate
public and private investment in projects of key regional or
national economic importance (OMB, 2009).
Developing the smart grid
Toward the end of the 2008 campaign season the candidate Obama
spoke more regularly about the potential for developing a smarter
electricity grid. As President, he has made this a distinct part of
his energy strategy. The 2010 budget includes unspecified sums for
deploying “millions of Smart Meters—a key step to a Smart Grid”
(OMB, 2009). Just what is a “smart grid?” The phrase refers to a
basket of technologies that
capitalize on the convergence of the internet, realtime sensing
technology, and computation to allow the electricity grid to
communicate between nodes, heal itself, and manage loads far more
efficiently. It will give grid operators and users greater control
and flexibility and will enable them to observe and analyze the
grid at both greater and more granular levels of detail than before
(Benedykcinski et al., 2008). A smart grid will not result from
building more power lines. More high voltage
lines constitute what could be thought of as a stronger grid, but
not a smarter one. The first smart grid components President
Obama’s budget targets are smart meters. Such devices will allow
for realtime pricing at the residential level, so that users can
save money by switching electricity use to offpeak times. Through
this and many other technologies, a smarter grid has the potential
to increase energy efficiency and reliability (Benedykcinski et al,
2008). A major driver for deploying smart grid technologies is to
improve conditions for
distributed energy generation by making it easier and more
profitable for small producers such as homes and small companies to
tie in onsite generation capacity to the grid. The May 21st draft
of the WaxmanMarkey bill includes distributed generation
incentives. It proposes that large energy suppliers receive one
efficiency/renewable generation credit per MWh generated, while
small generators receive three (House Committee on Energy and
Commerce, 5/21/09). Some smart grid technologies could benefit land
conservation. Greater
distribution of energy supply may simultaneously increase the
amount of renewable energy used and lower the growth in the amount
of fossil fuel energy demanded. It may also reduce average
distances between electricity generators and end users, thereby
decreasing new demand for transmission capacity.
Investing in workforce training
To help install the infrastructural components described above,
President Obama has set aside $100 million for workforce
development (OMB 2009). It is unclear at this point how the
training programs will be structured.
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20 :
2 Here are a few examples of allocations: 30 percent of the total
allocation is for electrici ty distributors, 5 for coal pro
ducers, 9 for natural gas dis tributors to mitigate cost impacts
to consumers; 15 per cent is for energyintensive, tradeexposed
industries; 2 percent (growing to 8 percent by 2027) is for
wildlife and
natural resource protection
(Waxman and Markey, 2009). See bill sections 781789 for more
details.
Goal 3: Implement a marketbased capandtrade system for carbon
emissions Reducing CO2 emissions
The crown jewel of President Obama’s energy policy, and likely the
most challenging part to implement, is of course a federal
capandtrade system to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to “slow
global warming.” The administration’s stated objective is to reduce
emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below by 2050 (OMB,
2009). The WaxmanMarkey bill reflects and even pushes slightly
beyond the President’s goals. It calls for reductions of 20% by
2020, 42% by 2030, and 83% by 2050 (House Committee on Energy and
Commerce, summary 5/21/09). A capandtrade system generally works
by a governmental entity establishing a
maximum amount of a substance that can be emitted by companies,
then providing permits for discrete units of substance emission.
These permits may be sold by companies producing less of that
substance than their permits allow, to those producing more of it.
This keeps total emissions in check while creating a flexible,
incentivized path to for companies to reduce emissions.
Distributing permits
Originally, the administration planned to distribute 100% of carbon
dioxide emission permits by auction as opposed to granting some
permits for free based on companies’ historical emission levels.
This would eliminate a perverse incentive for companies to raise
their pollution levels before the capandtrade regime takes effect
in order to claim more free permits. As the budget put it, a 100%
auction would “ensure that the biggest polluters do not enjoy
windfall profits” (OMB, 2009). Though a 100% auction is still the
administration’s preference, the likelihood of
such a measure passing in Congress is slim. The May 21st draft of
the WaxmanMarkey bill retains Federal auction of only 15 percent
of permits, the proceeds from which will be used to help with
energy costs for low and middleincome households. The other 85
percent of permits will be allocated to a collection of interests,
including: protecting industry from the presumed high costs of
technology transition; energy efficiency and clean technology
investments; carbon dioxide capture and storage; domestic and
international adaptation; and prevention of international tropical
deforestation2 (Waxman and Markey, 2009). In this scheme, after the
15 percent of permits auctioned for low and middleincome
households, 61 percent go for free to CO2 emitters and the rest are
given to stakeholders to sell to generate funds for pursuit of
public interests such as those described above. President Obama’s
Science and Technology Policy director, John P. Holdren,
backed off the hard line of a 100% auction on April 8, well before
the Waxman Markey bill passed committee, saying the administration
would work with Congress to get a bill they could both agree on
(Eilperin, 2009). This suggests that the administration may go
along with the WaxmanMarkey allocation scheme.
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21 ’ ..
Auction revenues
One signal of how serious the administration is about implementing
a capandtrade system is its incorporation of permit revenues as a
major stream of income in the 2010 budget. The budget includes
projections of $237.5 billion in “climate revenues” between 2012
and 2014, and $645.7 billion by 2019. It proposes dedicating
roughly $66 billion in 2012 to the “Making Work Pay” tax credit to
help vulnerable communities adapt to a clean energy economy. The
rest of the proceeds, roughly $15 billion per year, would go to
investments in clean energy technologies (OMB, 2009). Of course, a
large percentage of these revenues might well be unrealized if the
allocations made in the May 21st draft of the WaxmanMarkey bill
become law.
Renewable portfolio and energy efficiency standards
In addition to the capandtrade mechanism, the WaxmanMarkey bill
includes a combined renewable energy and energy efficiency
standard. The standard requires electric utilities to generate six
percent of capacity from a combination of renewable energy and
energy efficiency. This requirement rises to 20 percent by 2020.
This first component is intended to increase demand for renewable
energy by requiring utilities either to generate or buy energy from
renewable sources. The efficiency standards requires that utilities
either help their customers use less energy or that they buy
credits from other utilities that document increased efficiency
from their plants and users (Center for American Progress, 2009).
Twentynine states currently have mandatory renewable portfolio
standards on the
books (five have voluntary standards), with required percentages
ranging from 11% to 25%, due between 2010 and 2025. However, many
states without such standards are those with significant fossil
fuel resources, such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, Oklahoma,
and Louisiana (Pew Center on Global Climate Change). By incenting
more demand for renewable energy and, through efficiency, decreased
total demand for energy, this Federal standard is likely to shift
some pressure away from fossil fuel based energy producing lands
and onto land offering opportunities for renewable energy
generation.
Feedin tariffs
So far the feedin tariff concept has not appeared on President
Obama’s agenda, though many cleaner energy advocates hope it does.
The feedin tar iff has been applied most successfully in Germany,
and on May 27, 2009 a feedin tariff law was passed in Vermont (Pew
Center on Global Climate Change). It requires that “grid system
operators” purchase renewable energy and sets a minimum price for
such energy to guarantee that renewable ener gy generators can
operate profitably (GRESA).
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22 :
3 See this resource for a graphi cal depiction of oil and gas
leases on land in the western
U.S.: http://www.ewg.org/ oil_and_gas/maps/index.php?
maptype=Lease_Summary
Goal 4: Improving federal, state, and municipal energy
efficiency
President Obama’s energy plans are not focused solely on increasing
supply. In his speech on February 24th he made a special point of
the opportunity to create green jobs to improve building energy
efficiency across the U.S. His 2010 budget aims to modernize
Federal buildings to reduce energy costs by 25% by 2013. It also
claims the Federal government will help state and city energy
efficiency efforts (OMB, 2009). In 2001 Dick Cheney claimed that
“conservation may be a sign of personal virtue
but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy
policy.” Despite this claim, energy efficiency is widely regarded
as the cheapest way of bringing energy supply and future demand
into alignment (Farrell et al., 2008). Robert Socolow and Stephen
Pacala assert that reducing global building energy use by 25
percent would reduce carbon emissions by 25 billion tons by 2055
(Socolow and Pacala, 2005). President Obama clearly is focused on
the importance of and potential for energy efficiency. His budget
calls for weatherizing 1 million homes annually, and projects that
the average home will save $350 per year through such
weatherization (OMB, 2009).
Goal 5: Increasing domestic oil and gas production
Although the direction of the nation’s energy policy has shifted
dramatically since the Bush administration, the U.S. will not wean
itself from fossil fuels any time soon. The U.S. currently consumes
19 million barrels of oil per day, over 60 percent of which is from
foreign sources (Mouawad, 2009). In order to further the goal of
independence from foreign oil, the Obama administration is pushing
several initiatives to increase domestic fossil fuel
production.
Use it or lose it During the summer of 2008, when gas hit $4 per
gallon, the Obama campaign began pushing a new proposal for dealing
with domestic oil and gas leases: “Use it or lose it.” Under such a
regime, designed to increase domestic production, oil and gas
companies would be required to begin drilling on the 68 million
acres of land and ocean on which they currently hold inactive
leases.3 If they did not begin drilling, the leases would be
reissued to companies that would use them (ObamaBiden, 2008).
Though the logic behind this move is controversial, since having a
lease on a piece
of land does not necessarily mean that land contains recoverable
oil or gas (WSJ, 2008), the administration included a subdued
version of the “useitorloseit” idea in the Department of
Interior’s budget. In 2011 the DOI will begin charging fees on non
producing leases in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to the $582
million in Federal revenues this is expected to produce, the DOI
hopes it will generate higher incentives for companies to
relinquish or use their leased lands (OMB, 2009).
Oil shale and natural gas production
The summer of 2008 saw other pledges to increase the domestic
fossil energy supplies. Candidates Obama and Biden promised to push
forward the Alaska Natural Gas
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Pipeline project, and to identify obstacles and speed permitting
for drilling in several oil and oil shale formations. These include
the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the Barnett Shale in
Texas, the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, and the Bakken Shale of
North Dakota and Montana, which the USGS recently concluded may
contain up to 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil4 (ObamaBiden,
2008). Yet now that the pressure of high gas prices is off, the
administration seems to be
proceeding more slowly, at least with oil shale development.
Shortly after taking office, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
reversed several “midnight rulings” from the Bush administration’s
last days in office, which had opened up opportunities for oil and
shale drilling in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah (Mouawad, 2009;
Mouawad, 2008). It is unclear how future pressures from perceived
fuel shortages or prices may affect this administration’s treatment
of oil shale development.
Goal 6: Investing in carbon capture and storage
From President Obama’s speeches and policy emphasis it is clear
that he favors the new, lowcarbon energy economy to the old. Yet
he is constrained by increasing energy demands, the current state
of alternative energy technology, and historically low tolerance
among U.S. citizens for high energy costs. He cannot switch the
nation to lowcarbon energy sources alone and keep pace with
growing energy demand. Therefore, continued use of fossil fuels,
particularly coal, is almost certain, and, given sufficiently high
prices on carbon dioxide emissions, significant investment into
carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology is
likely5
(MIT, 2007). To bolster CCS, the 2009 Recovery Act included funding
to demonstrate CCS
technology by building five coalfired power plants with integrated
carbon capture technology (OMB, 2009). The 2010 budget also
provides for CCS project loan guarantees under the Energy Policy
Act 2005 Title 17, and increases the DOE funding for demonstrating
geologic CO2 storage (OMB, 2009).
Policies focusing on land conservation
There are several components of current and pending federal policy
that may help land conservation. President Obama’s budget includes
enhancements to the Conservation Stewardship Program, the
Conservation Reserve Program, and the Environmental Quality
Incentives Program, included in the 2008 Farm Bill, to help farmers
conserve land, benefit from carbon credits, and improve wildlife
habitat. The Department of Agriculture budget includes $119 million
(an increase of $34 million) for the Forest Land and Water
Conservation Fund to purchase easements on forest land under threat
of development (OMB, 2009). That these investments in land
conservation measures occur in the same
document as the aforementioned transmission, oil and gas
development projects highlights at least a tension in the Obama
Administration’s environmental strategy. The Administration’s goals
include support for both land conservation and energy
infrastructure efforts that threaten conserved lands (Steater,
2009).
4 Exploiting Pennsylvania’s nat ural gas reserves seem to have
remained absent from both
candidate Obama’s campaign
carbon dioxide capture and
storage see background paper on the topic included in this
packet.
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24 :
The WaxmanMarkey bill also contains measures designed to support
land conservation. It sets regulatory guidelines for the EPA
Administrator to use, should she or he allow forestry projects to
be eligible for carbon dioxide offset credits. The guidelines
include promotion of native plant use and biodiversity, and a
prohibition against noxious weeds and invasive species (House
Committee on Energy and Commerce, section 741). After finding that
“land use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for
roughly
20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions,” the bill also
proposes that the EPA Administrator work with USAID to establish
programs in developing countries to avoid deforestation and to
accurately account for it (House Committee on Energy and Commerce,
summary 5/21/09, sections 751754). The bill’s accommodations for
adaptation also may have implications for land
conservation. The bill originally allocates two percent of
emissions permits to states (rising to four percent in 2022 and
eight percent after 2026), for them to sell and use the proceeds
for “projects, programs, or measures to build resilience to the
impacts of climate change, including:
1) extreme weather events such as flooding and tropical
cyclones
2) more frequent heavy precipitation events
3) water scarcity and adverse impacts on water quality
4) stronger and longer heat waves
5) more frequent and severe droughts
6) rises in sea level
7) ecosystem disruption
8) increased air pollution
9) effects on public health”(House Committee on Energy and
Commerce, section 453).
The WaxmanMarkey bill also proposes the establishment of a Natural
Resources Climate Change Adaptation Panel to assess needs and
develop strategies for federal agencies to “make natural resources
more resilient to the impacts of climate change.” It would require
federal agencies such as NOAA, and USGS, as well as states, to
develop natural resources adaptation plans. And it would create a
federal fund to aid in natural resources adaptation to climate
change (House Committee on Energy and Commerce, summary 5/21/09).
Now that the WaxmanMarkey bill has passed out of its original
committee, it goes
to several others with jurisdiction. The one most likely to make
major changes, or to hold up the bill entirely, is the Agriculture
Committee. Its chief concerns relate to what materials are included
as renewable biofuels, the assessment of emissions from corn
ethanol production, the assignment of credit for soil management
practices, and the impact potential energy price increases could
have on agricultural interests (Winter, 5/21/09).
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25 ’ ..
questions for consideration
1) How do the administration’s land conservation goals and programs
square with its energy infrastructure development and other
environmental goals? What opportunities does this provide for the
conservation community to engage the administration on both energy
infrastructure development and land conservation?
2) What impacts will increased federal funding for renewable energy
R&D, investment, and production have on land conservation
goals?
3) What changes in the local politics of conservation could result
from the potentially significant economic development forces
stemming from energy development in rural areas?
4) How has the conservation community been involved in shaping
Administration goals and policy? How should and could the community
enhance its involvement?
5) What political challenges does the administration face to
enacting its policy goals? Where and how might the conservation
community help or hinder enactment?
organizations and individuals doing interesting work
Michael Cragg, The Brattle Group (http://www.brattle.com)
Sherri EvansStanton, The Brandywine Conservancy Environmental
Management Center
(http://www.brandywineconservancy.org/index2.html)
Diana Farrell, National Economic Council, formerly of the McKinsey
Global Institute
(http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/perspective/biography/index.asp)
Kate Galbraith, John Kanter, and Jad Mouawad of The New York Times
Green, Inc. Blog (http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/)
Bracken Hendricks, Center for American Progress
(http://www.american
progress.org/aboutus/staff/HendricksBracken.html)
U.S. Representative Edward Markey (http://markey.house.gov/)
Pew Center on Global Climate Change
(http://www.pewclimate.org/)
Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/)
United States Climate Action Partnership
(http://www.uscap.org/)
U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (http://waxman.house.gov/)
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE). (2009). Overview –
Renewable Energy Provisions – American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009. Available at:
http://www.acore.org/files/images/email/acore_stimulus_overview.pdf
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Appropriations.
(2009). Available at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/h1/Recovery_Bill_Div_A.pdf
Barackobama.com. ObamaBiden Energy Fact Sheet: New Energy for
America. Available at:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf
Benedykcinski, M., DuerBalkind, M., Pickett, C. R. (2008). The
Smart Grid. Yale University. Unpublished. Available from Casey R.
Pickett upon request.
Blinch, R. (2009). U.S. interior chief touts renewable energy
zones. Reuters. March 24, 2009. Retrieved 6/1/2009, 2009, from
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environment
News/idUKTRE52N7EX20090324
Broder, J. M. Energy Department Issues First RenewableEnergy Loan
Guarantee, Green, Inc., New York Times. March 20, 2009. Available
at: http://greeninc.
blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/energydepartmentissuesfirstrenewableenergy
loanguarantee/ (accessed 4/13/09)
Cowan, R., Rascoe, A. Democrats launch push for climate change
bill. Reuters, 3/31/09. Available at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE52U04Q
20090331
Cragg, M., Kahn, M. (2009). Carbon geography: the political economy
of congressional support for legislation intended to mitigate
greenhouse gas production. Unpublished. Retrieved 6/2/09 from
http://www.grist.org/article/20090518carbongeography
Deutche Bank Group. Global Climate Change Regulation Policy
Developments: July 2008February 2009. Available at:
http://dbadvisors.com/climatechange
The Economist. Energiser money. Issue 3/284/3/09, pg. 38
Eilperin, Juliet. (2009). Science Chief Discusses Climate Strategy.
The Washington Post. April 9, 2009
Energy Current. (2009). US$80 billion needed to tie wind power to
Eastern grid. 2/10/2009. Available at:
http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=3&story
id=15922
Executive Office of the President of the United States, Office of
Management and Budget. (2009). A New Era of Responsibility –
Renewing America’s Promise. Available at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
Galbraith, K. (2009). The Climate Bill Debate Continues
(WAXMANMARKEY). New York Times. May 22, 2009. Available at:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/
2009/05/22/theclimatebilldebatecontinues/
Germany Renewable Energy Sources Act (GRESA). Available at:
http://www.pvupscale.
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yale school of forestry & environmental studies
key takeaways from the discussion with dan reicher,
google.org
Dan Reicher, Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives at
Google.Org, opened the workshop with his thoughts on the links
between the administration’s efforts to promote clean energy and
their implications for land conservation. Some of the key takeaways
from his remarks and the ensuing discussion included the
following:
Clean energy is seen as an urgent subset of the response to climate
change. When combined with its cobenefits – green jobs and energy
security – the rapid deploy ment of clean energy technologies has
powerful momentum in the current administration.
Similarly, there is a growing – but still small – recognition that
land conservation is part of the climate solution. Few land trusts
are involved in the clean energy or climate discussions – even
though their work prevents emissions, helps to store carbon, and
increases our ability to adapt, while their opposition to new
energy facilities helps stymie their deployment.
Need to integrate technology, policy and finance as one thinks
about responses to climate change. The energy technologies needed
are at various levels of development and face a wide range of
costs. States are still leading on clean energy policy, although
the new administration has made it a high priority. While trillions
of dollars of investment in clean energy are needed, investors are
wary of risk, including environmental permitting. As such, both
permitting and financing new facilities are leverage points for
conservation advocates.
“Energy efficiency should come first in everyone’s thinking.” – Dan
Reicher, Google.org
Information technology is driving better decisions about where to
site clean energy facilities. Online tools offer an opportunity to
develop new approaches to siting decisions, particularly regarding
the engagement of affected communities. They may also create new
ways to aggregate and understand the impacts of decentralized,
local land use decisions – such as smart growth initiatives.
Taken together, these developments also offer new opportunities for
the conservation community to help say yes to “good” clean energy
projects, thus speeding their deployment.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
background
“[T]o truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save
our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to
ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of
energy . . . to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen
billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and
solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuelefficient
cars and trucks built right here in America.” –President Barack
Obama, 3/23/2009
General information
The United States is currently heavily reliant on nonrenewable
energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. As Figure 1
illustrates, recent data shows that renewables account for
approximately 7% of energy consumption in the U.S. While still not
a major portion of the nation’s energy supply, use of renewable
energy sources has greatly increased in recent years. This session
of the conference agenda will focus on the interaction of land
conservation and certain types of renewable energy including wind,
solar, and geothermal energy, which as of 2006 collectively
provided about 10% of the total renewable energy supply in the U.S.
(EIA, 2008). A separate session will be dedicated solely to
biomass.
Wind
Wind turbines use the wind’s energy to create clean, renewable
electricity. Wind turbines are comprised of a tower, on top of
which a nacelle and a rotor blade component are attached. The size
specification of an industrialscale wind turbine differs depending
on the manufacturer and the production capacity of the wind turbine
in question, but industrialscale turbines are all well over 100
feet aboveground. An industrial turbine with a lowerend production
capacity has a maximum height of nearly 400 feet when one rotor
blade is fully extended above the tower, and larger turbines may
have a total height well above 400 feet. For utilityscale
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32 :
wind energy production, many wind turbines are built in close
proximity to one another to create wind plants or wind farms. These
farms can take different shapes, ranging from numerous parallel
rows of turbines on a windy plane to a single line of turbines
built on a ridge.
Figure 1 The role of renewable energy consumption in the nation’s
energy supply, 2006
Source: EIA (2008)
Geothermal Geothermal energy sources allow the capture of heat from
the interior of the Earth to produce electricity and the heating
and cooling of buildings. The Earth’s heat energy can be captured
from several sources: 1) the ground near the Earth’s surface that
retains a temperature of around 50 to 60 F; 2) hot water or steam
that can be accessed by drilling deep into the earth; and 3)
geothermal reservoirs near the earth’s surface that are mostly
located in Alaska, Hawaii, and western states. Utilityscale use of
geothermal energy usually involves the capture and use of hot water
or steam from reservoirs to power generators. Three types of
geothermal power plants exist: dry steam, flash steam, and binary
cycle (NREL Geothermal, 2009).
Solar A variety of techniques exist to convert solar energy—the
capture of the sun’s light and heat energy—into usable power. On a
broad scale, solar energy capture is either passive or active.
Attempts at utilityscale solar energy production involve active
solar collection, usually using solar thermal concentrating systems
or photovoltaics (PVs). PV cells are composed of two layers of
semiconductor material, usually made of silicon crystals, with
impurities added to give one layer a positive charge and one a
negative charge. Electrons between the two differently charged
layers of semiconductor are excited when sunlight enters the PV
cell, and these electrons flow through thin wires in the cell,
creating energy. Solar thermal concentrating systems
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
33
use “mirrors and lenses to concentrate the rays of the sun” to
produce very high temperature, which can be used to create energy
(Union of Concerned Scientists). The most common form of
concentrating system is the parabolic trough, “long, curved mirrors
that concentrate sunlight on a liquid inside a tube that runs
parallel to the mirror,” and the liquid, in turn, produces steam
that drives electric turbines (Union of Concerned Scientists).
Currently, solar power is not as viable a utilityscale source of
electricity as wind or geothermal energy, though photovoltaic power
plants have been built in numerous locations in Europe and a number
are in production or under construction in the U.S. The Solar
America Initiative (SAI), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
initiative to increase the advancement of sophisticated solar
energy technology, aims to make solar electricity from
photovoltaics price competitive by 2015 (U.S. DOE Solar,
2009).
What are the impacts of renewable energy on land conservation?
Because they produce energy without the production of greenhouse
gases that contribute to global warming, renewable energy sources
can have many longterm benefits for the future health of conserved
land. While beneficial for the environment and for national energy
interests because they are naturally replenished and do not produce
greenhouse gases or other emissions, renewable energy sources are
not, however, without problems. One of the most heated debates
about renewable energy recently has centered on the construction of
new transmission lines to connect cities to more potential sources
of renewable energy. Environmentalists have fallen on both sides of
the debate, as in the case of the “Sunrise Powerlink” project
proposed between San Diego and the Imperial Valley in California
(The Economist, 2009). Transmission is dealt with in detail in a
subsequent session paper, and the following section reviews the
environmental and land conservation concerns presented specifically
by wind, geothermal, and solar energy.
SUMMARY of Environmental Pros and Cons of Renewable Energy
Energy Source Pros Cons Wind • Renewable Source
• Prevents greenhouse gas emission in energy production that
contributes to global warming
• No air pollution
• Very limited emissions
• Noise Impacts • Mineralrich water discharge
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34 :
Solar • Renewable Source • Negative Aesthetic Impacts • Prevents
greenhouse gas (Largescale project footprints) emission in energy
• Possible new development of production that contributes
industrial scale projects in to global warming previously protected
areas
• No air pollution • Requirement of additional transmission
lines
• Waste/Toxicity risk from silicon and heavy metals in PV
manufacture and disposal
Photo Credit: U.S. DOE (2010)
Wind
Industrialscale wind, especially, has faced opposition because of
its impacts on the landscape and to surrounding wildlife. The
National Research Council (NRC) recently wrote a report detailing
the environmental impacts of wind energy projects. Many complaints
about wind farms involve aesthetic issues because in many cases
wind farms involve industrial structures sited in rural and
sometimes scenic areas. In the northeast, turbines are often
situated on ridges, making them visible from many areas and at
significant distances. The NRC study found that regulatory review
processes are often inadequate at addressing aesthetic impacts
(National Research Council, 2007). Other areas of concern in the
permitting and development of wind energy include: impacts on birds
and bats (Johnson and Arnett, 2008; Militana, 2009), noise impacts
(AEI, 2009), impacts on historic places, habitat disturbance,
construction impacts, and decommissioning concerns (State of
Vermont Public Service Board, 2007; National Research Council,
2007). Regarding impacts to wildlife, the American Wind Wildlife
Institute was created to further the goal of developing wind while
protecting wildlife and wildlife habitat and has begun a number of
initiatives, including landscape mapping of sensitive wildlife
areas at potential wind development locations. In addition to the
above concerns presented by wind development, there can be
additional financial and tax challenges specific to siting turbines
on land that has been preserved either by conservation easement or
by sale or gift to a land trust.
Geothermal Geothermal resources are a potentially important
renewable energy source but present some environmental concerns. In
some cases, the flow of hot springs and geysers has decreased or
ceased near geothermal plants. Furthermore, some plants produce
mineralrich discharge water that needs to be handled responsibly.
Interestingly, from a land conservation perspective, as illustrated
in Figure 2, geothermal energy production requires a smaller amount
of squarefootage of land use for energy production than either
solar energy or wind power. However, while geothermal plants may
not use much land, they are very industrial plants and can pose
aesthetic impacts as many geothermal resources are situated in very
scenic areas (Kirk, Sierra Club, 1980). Geothermal plants may also
present some aesthetic
yale school of forestry & environmental studies
35
concerns in the form of noise, and muffling techniques have had to
be developed to limit noise from fans in the plant cooling towers
(Geothermal Energy Association). While geothermal power plants do
use renewable energy, they are not necessarily completely emissions
free; but, even the geothermal plants with highest emissions are
“considered environmentally benign compared with fossil fuels”
(Geothermal Energy Association).
BURKE, NY: A CAUTIONARY TALE FENNER, NY: A SUCCESS STORY?
A wind farm in Burke, NY gained notoriety and In 2001, a 20turbine
wind project began was written up in the NY Times for charges of
producing energy in Fenner, NY.